The Blog

Safe Landing Zone

Lately the kids have become more interested in jumping! The older children will, of course, try to jump off of anything and everything–whether we like it or not. 😉 The younger set are still working on the lift-off, meaning the jumps are more like big steps.

Jumping is obviously a form of risky play, and it can also be a fun social activity. As such, it’s been important to talk about how to be safe when jumping. In our context, that often means that we need to look for a “safe landing zone.”

To look for a safe landing zone, we need to:

Stop

Look for bodies or toys in the way

Ask/wait for bodies to move, or

Get down and clear toys out of the way

We check for a safe landing zone each and every time we want to jump. Waiting can be hard, but it’s how we take care of each other and ourselves.

Recently in the basement, a group had a lot of success and a lot of fun doing just that.Initially, the children were jumping from the top of the slide down to the ground. This was fun, but it was also difficult to ensure a safe landing. Some children wanted to jump, while others wanted to climb the slide or slide down. Plus, the area in front of the slide is often a favorite place for toys to hang, out for whatever reason.

I wanted to set the children up for success, practicing the safe landing zone. So We brought a couple of the big pillow blocks over to a large, empty part of the basement. We set either a floor cushion or a bean bag in front of these blocks, and let loose!

The children were really quite patient as they all figured out how to play this game together. After several rounds, they got the hang of it and each child was able to move out of the way after jumping without being reminded.